to an iron lady standing in a windy portal

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command 
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips.  "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

                                               Emma Lazarus
















.....

Song for the Last Act

     

Now that I have your face by heart, I look   

Less at its features than its darkening frame   

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,   

Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook.   

Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease

The lead and marble figures watch the show   

Of yet another summer loath to go

Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read   

In the black chords upon a dulling page   

Music that is not meant for music’s cage,

Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.   

The staves are shuttled over with a stark   

Unprinted silence. In a double dream   

I must spell out the storm, the running stream.   

The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;   

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps   

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

                                     Louise Bogan


















 

and then a mere moment in the world

For a Stone Girl at ___Sanchi

half asleep on the cold grass

night rain flicking the maples

under a black bowl upside-down

on a flat land on a wobbling speck

smaller than stars, space, the size of a seed,

       hollow as bird skulls.

light flies across it –never is seen.

a big rock weatherd funny,

old tree trunks turnd stone,

split rocks and find clams.

all that time loving; two flesh persons changing,

       clung to, doorframes notions,

spear-hafts in a rubble of years.

                touching, this dream pops.

it was real:

and it lasted forever.

                                                                                  Gary Snyder
















.....

found voice recognition poem

Hey John Mr. frank Saturday.


 One being the way from kickoff
I'm just in your birthday so I think --
so I was -- hi up anyway sorry haven't been
 -- home or home --
phone such as they all.

Talk to you later bye.






.....as eloquence increases
















....

words tend to sound like the things they represent

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.                                         ...some deranged Jesuit seems to have written this ....

might as well face reality

            

                

              ALL THINGS DESIRE

All things desire to be like God,
   and infinite space is a mirror
    that tries to reflect His  body.

But it can’t.

All that infinite existence can show us of Him
              is only an atom of God’s being.

God stood behind Himself one night

   and cast a  brilliant shadow

       from which creation came.

Even this shadow is such a flame

  that  moths consume their selves in it every second -
   with their sacred passion to possess beautiful forms.

Existence mirrors God the best it can,
     though how arrogant for any image in that mirror,
      for any human being, to think they know His will;

       for His will has never been spoken,

His voice would ignite the earth’s wings

     and all upon  it.

We invent truths about God to protect ourselves
             from the wolf’s cries we hear and make.

All things desire to be like God,
           all things desire to love.

                             Thomas Aquinas

                                      ....Daniel Ladinsky,  trans.

.....